13 February, 2017

Dear Vlad: don't you dare betray Snowden!

Edward
Snowden has said he is unafraid of Russian president Vladimir Putin
turning him over to the US as a favor to President-elect Donald
Trump.

The
national security whistleblower, speaking during a Thursday webchat
from Russia, where he has been stranded since disclosing revelations
of widespread National Security Agency surveillance in 2013, said it
would be “crazy to dismiss” the prospect of Trump striking a deal
with Putin that leads to his extradition and trial.

But
he added: “If I was worried about safety, if the security and
the future of myself was all that I cared about, I would still be in
Hawaii.”

Snowden
told the webchat hosted by the Dutch privacy-focused search engine
StartPage he was comfortable with and proud of the choices he had
made.

“I
think I did the right thing,” he said. “While I can’t
predict what the future looks like, I don’t know what’s going to
happen tomorrow, I can be comfortable with the way I’ve lived to
today.”